SHAPES UNSPOKEN

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HAPPY READING 🥰

Cindy Washington Britto

I love Sean.

That’s the truth no matter how messy everything else feels.

I didn’t outgrow him. I didn’t stop loving him. But somewhere between being his wife, being Steph’s mother, and being the woman who held everything together — I lost something.

Myself.

And the worst part is… I can’t even explain it properly. Not to him. Not even to myself.

All I know is that something inside me started whispering that this wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t enough. That I was shrinking inside a life that looked perfect from the outside.

Sean is a good man.

He provided. He protected. He loved loudly and without hesitation. He built a beautiful life for us.

But he built it around his dreams.

And somewhere along the way, mine got folded neatly into the background.

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I don’t want to just sit at home.

I don’t want to be introduced as “Sean’s wife” before my own name.

I don’t want my degrees collecting dust while I cook dinner and schedule playdates.

It’s not that I don’t love my husband.

It’s not that I don’t love my son.

It’s that loving them didn’t silence the ache inside me.

I worked hard for my education. My bachelor’s. My master’s in Communication, English Literature, and English Language. I sacrificed sleep, fun, and comfort for those achievements.

My parents worked double shifts to send me to college.

I can still see my mother’s tired eyes when she hugged me on graduation day.

“You’re going to be something,” she whispered.

And I believed her.

So how do I now look at myself and accept being… less?

Sean thinks because he can provide everything, I don’t need to want anything else.

He offers to rent me office space. To fund my ideas. To “help” me build something.

But that’s not what I want.

I don’t want to be handed opportunity.

I want to earn it.

The way he did.

The way he fought for his place at the table at Chesney Smith.

I stood by him while he worked late nights.

While he practically lived inside that building.

There were nights I had to drag him home. Nights Steph asked why Daddy wasn’t here to tuck him in.

I swallowed my loneliness because I believed in his dream.

Why can’t he believe in mine?

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He says he never stopped me.

But he hovers.

He inserts himself into every step.

He wants to smooth the path before I even trip.

And love like that feels beautiful… until it starts to feel like a cage.